A question that may have occurred to some of you, as it has to me, is, why would God bother to give us a sign like the Panthers winning the Super Bowl to indicate that revival or awakening had come to America? Wouldn't it be self-evident if revival was truly happening? Maybe not.
I've heard it said that Andrew Murray, a true man of God from South Africa, had prayed for years for God to send revival to his country. According to the source I heard this from, God sent John G. Lake to South Africa where He had a remarkable healing ministry and planted hundreds of churches. Was this the answer to Andrew Murray's prayers? If it was, Mr. Murray did not recognize it as such, presumably because Mr. Lake's ministry was not what he was looking for or expecting.
An even greater and more obvious example of a God-sent revival happening and most not recognizing it for what it was, was the coming of Jesus. As long-awaited as this present-day coming revival is, it pales in comparison to the long-awaited and much prophesied coming of Israel's Messiah. But when the Messiah finally came, he wasn't recognized! John the Baptist, the very herald of Christ, had his own doubts and had to send some of his disciples to ask Jesus up front, "Are you the One, or should we look for another?" Jesus' own disciples were filled with doubt when they saw their hopes for him dashed by the crucifixion.
When one studies the history of major, genuine moves of God, one finds that these moves are always "out of the box" and are therefore always resisted, if not outright persecuted by the status quo church.
Have you heard the saying, "God will offend our minds in order to test our hearts"? The spiritual elite of Jesus' day were offended that a carpenter's son from the sticks [Nazareth was literally a town built on a chalk hill, and the province it was in was derogatively called "Galilee of the Gentiles"] would consider himself as sent from God. Amazingly, many of them seemed able to accept that as strange a fellow as John the Baptist was, he was sent from God. But Jesus was just too offensive to their spiritual/religious sensibilities.
Are we any different? Would we accept a move of God if it were led by a Southerner speaking like a hillbilly? ...or by a black Pentecostal preacher? ...or by a woman? ...or by someone out of the L.G.B.T. community? We have a hard time realizing how offensive Jesus was to the religious leaders of his day, but he was just as offensive as any of the categories I just suggested. He surrounded himself with "sinners (i.e.harlots, tax collectors/thieves, etc.)" and used a despised Samaritan as a hero in one of his parables. He truly did not act or speak like the kind of Messiah the Jews were looking forward to!
Are we prepared to have our minds offended, to have our hearts exposed, by this coming move of God? Revivals are messy things, not neat and tidy like we would like them to be. A lot of garbage has to come to the surface for the cleansing to happen. Those who are not offended by the smells or the sounds or the sights of dirty people coming clean will be the ones to embrace this kind of "out of the box" move of the Spirit. God have mercy on us, that we might be among those who will embrace and not reject what He is about to do. I guarantee, it will not be what we are expecting!
"Truth is stranger than fiction, for fiction is limited to what we can imagine, and truth isn't."
- Mark Twain
"When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons. She went and told those who had been with him and who were mourning and weeping. When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it.
Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country. These returned and reported it to the rest; but they did not believe them either.
Later Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen." (Mark 16:9-14)
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